Many verbal changes are to be found scattered here and there
through the book, some of them for the better, some, perhaps,
for the worse. The prevailing purpose seems to have been to
expunge all obsolete words and phrases while dealing tenderly
with obsolescent ones. In this course, however, the revisers
were by no means always and everywhere consistent.

"Prevent," in the sense of "anticipate," is altered in some places
but left unchanged in others. In the _Visitation of Prisoners_, an
office borrowed from the Irish Prayer Book, the thoroughly obsolete
expression, "As you tender," in the sense of "as you value," the
salvation of your soul, is retained.

From the Psalter has disappeared in the American Book "Thou tellest
my Sittings," although why this particular archaism should have
been selected for banishment and a hundred others spared, it is
not easy to understand.

Perhaps some sudden impatience seized the reviser, like that which
moved Bishop Wren, while annotating his Prayer Book, to write on
the margin of the calendar for August, "Out with 'dog days' from
among the saints."

Considering what a bond of unity the Lord's Prayer appears to be
becoming among all English-speaking worshippers, it is, perhaps,
to be regretted that our revisers changed the wording of it in two
or three places. The excision of "Lighten our darkness" must
probably be attributed to the prosaic matter-of-fact temper which
had possession of everybody and everything during the last quarter
of the eighteenth century.

The Ordinal, the Articles, the Consecration of Churches, and the
Institution of Ministers made no part of the Prayer Book as it was
set forth in 1789; nor do they, even now, strictly speaking, make
a part of it, although in the matter of binding force and legal
authority they are on the same footing.

The Ordinal and Articles are substantially identical with the
English Ordinal and Articles, save in the matter of a reference
to the Athanasian Creed and several references to the connection of
Church and State. The Consecration of Churches and the Institution
of Ministers are offices distinctively American. If I add that the
American Book drops out of the Visitation of the Sick a form
of private absolution, and greatly modifies the service for
Ash-Wednesday, we shall have made our survey of differences
tolerably, though by no means exhaustively complete.

And now what is the lesson taught us by the history of the Prayer